


Heirloom

by Tibbins



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 300th episode, Abusive John Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Family, Family Dinner, Homophobic John Winchester, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Talking, mentions of Destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 21:52:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19385338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tibbins/pseuds/Tibbins
Summary: John is back, and Dean is angry. My take on the 300th episode. Mind the tags.





	Heirloom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kohumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kohumi/gifts), [argle_fraster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/gifts).



> Hi everyone!
> 
> This is one I've been working on for a long time. I've wanted to write something like this since even before the 300th episode but I desperately wanted to do it justice. The 300th gave me the perfect setting and I've been working on it since. It has taken many drafts, many, many hours, a full-on re-write and even a call for help but here it is.
> 
> The title is from a Sleeping at Last song with the same name (it's awesome, and reminds me so much of Dean), check it out!
> 
> WARNING: Please mind the tags.
> 
> Gifted to Kohumi and argle_fraster for giving me such wonderful feedback and thoughts! I can't thank you guys enough.
> 
> Enjoy ^_^

Halfway between the library and the war room caught Dean in the negative space that John Winchester occupied. It drew him in, child-like wonder coupled with the base urge to run. Seeing him standing there, everything felt bigger somehow; the doorways wider, the corridors larger, or maybe he just felt smaller, it was hard to tell.

He swallowed hard as he approached, feeling his shoulders pull back, his spine straighten, his muscles bunch painfully under a too-thin shirt.

John leaned against the wall at the top of the steps with a beer in his hand, surveying his new surroundings, taking it all in with a fond smile that took Dean aback.

"Dean," John greeted, using his shoulders to ease himself off the wall as he turned to face his eldest son. His voice was gravel and sand, abrasive, authoritative, but calm and grounding when it wanted to be. Still, Dean's knees quaked a little as he took the first step, pausing there, enough distance that it felt awkward but not enough to feel safe.

"Hey," he said, regretting his decision to initiate a conversation,  _this_  conversation. He'd had thirteen years to think of all the things that he wanted to say to his father but now here he was and Dean couldn't think of a single damn one. "It's a lot, huh?" He said instead, gesturing lamely to the bunker around him.

"Last I remember, we were on the tail end of a witch hunt in Maine and Sam was in law school, not wanting anything to do with us; suddenly it's 2019, you're all grown up and living with an angel and the devil's kid and my dead wife in an underground bunker, so..." John's tone was light, patient, as though waiting for Dean to get to the point was something he could just  _do_  now.

Dean's mouth twitched and he forced a laugh, "Right, yeah, sorry. Stupid question."

John shrugged and leaned back against the wall, studying him as he shuffled his feet, "I don't really think there's a protocol for this, Dean; it's allowed to be awkward."

"I guess."

John chuckled and watched as Dean mirrored his position on the opposite wall, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans to hide the fact that they were shaking. The stone was cool on his heated back while he waited for his brain to stop churning enough for him to pull out a coherent thought.

"To tell the truth," John said first, a strange expression on his face, something like satisfaction, but deeper, "I didn't expect you to still be alive at forty. I mean, you're a good hunter, don't get me wrong, but reckless. I figured you'd rush in one too many times and find yourself outnumbered."

Dean snorted, "Yeah, I figured the same."

"S'pose it's not Death's fault it just don't stick," John said with a wry grin.

"It ain't through lack of trying, believe me, she hates my guts."

John's eyebrows shot up and then he shook his head, "I'll bet that's another long story, huh?"

"We've, uh… we've got a lot of those."

"Apparently." John looked a little wistful as he said it, "Well, I'd definitely like a full report at some point. I wanna know everything I've missed out on."

"Yes, Sir." Dean winced as the moniker slipped out before he could stop it, scraping against his throat like shards of glass.

John nodded, satisfied, and took a swig of his beer. Dean shifted against the wall, wishing he'd grabbed his own beer on his way past the kitchen, but Sam and Mary had been talking quietly in there, heads together and tears shining in their eyes, he hadn't wanted to interrupt. Chuck knew Sammy could use some Mom time to help process this crap.

"I'm glad you boys patched things up, too." John said after a moment, his eyes catching on a photograph of the two of them on one of the library shelves.

It was the only picture they had in any of the communal areas. Cas had put it there one day, a simple wooden frame and cheap paper. Dean remembered Cas taking the photo, a snapshot of Dean with his head thrown back in laughter while Sam clutched at his stomach. A stupid joke that he couldn't remember, one of those moments that was impossible to explain to someone who hadn't been there.

Dean had questioned Cas about the picture; not that he minded it was there, it was actually kinda nice to see a reminder that this place was lived in, a home. Cas had responded that it helped when his eyes were burned out from flipping through lore books or when he was frustrated or worried about what they had yet to face; when he was tempted to give up, he said, the picture reminded him of what he was fighting for.

Dean had awkwardly patted him on the shoulder for that one, a fire burning in his cheeks, unexpectedly touched by the angel's sincerity.

John strode over, placing his near-empty bottle down on the table on the way. He reached the frame and carefully picked it up, smiling at the image it held. Dean's heart swelled at the sight. There was pride in those eyes, a joy for his sons' happiness that Dean hadn't seen since he was very young. "It always killed me to watch you fight."

"It did?"

Dean hated the desperation in his voice, hated the way that his feet seemed to move on their own, scaling the remaining two steps but hesitating in the archway of the library entrance.

John placed the photo back where he found it, still smiling, though it had turned somewhat sad.

"Of course it did. You're my boys, you just forgot that you were brothers sometimes."

"I couldn't  _be_  his brother sometimes," Dean said quietly, voice thick with emotion, eyes on the photograph; a rare moment of joy in their lives captured forever when so much else was lost. "It was hard to switch off when you came home."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John asked, a small frown creasing between his eyes as he folded his arms, immediately defensive but not angry, not yet.

"Nothin'," Dean shrugged, faking casual, his eyes dropping to the floor, "just, you know, that you left me in charge a lot, it's different. I had to make him go to bed on time and keep an eye on how much he was growin' in case he needed new jeans and try to help him with his homework and school projects even though I didn't understand any of it. I had to put my foot down sometimes and that's not really a brother thing, it's..."

"...It's a dad thing." John finished for him.

"Yeah."

There was a brief pause while Dean intently studied a chip in the wooden floor and pretended not to be aware of the fact that John was watching him.

"I put a lot on your shoulders, I know that." John said carefully.

"Yeah, maybe starting by leaving me in a motel room for three days with a just-in-case-shotgun and a two-year-old wasn't your best idea."

"Alright," John said, sounding of all things, diplomatic. He ran a hand over his shaved scalp and let out a deep sigh, "I probably deserved that one."

"Just that one, huh?"

"Now come on, don't make this into a fight."

"It's only a fight if you hit back," Dean said bitterly, "if you still think you were right."

"Right about what?"

"About what you did to us," but that wasn't quite true, so he tried again, tasting the sharpness in the words as they left his tongue, "what you did to  _me_."

John folded his arms again, that brief glimpse of vulnerability gone.

"And what exactly was it that I did to you, Dean?" he asked, voice like the magazine of a glock sliding home.

"You want a goddamn list?" Dean spat, glancing up at those hooded eyes for a split second before losing his nerve. How easily this man could make him afraid. He'd thought he was ready, he'd thought he could handle this. But John Winchester's presence was something else entirely. Dean felt an angry stab of  _wrong_  as he saw his father spliced against the background of his everyday; even relaxed the man cut a sharp outline, and he was far from relaxed now.

"Oh, I'll give you a goddamn list," John growled, his jaw tight and his eyes hard, unimpressed by his son's back-talk. "I prepared you for this life, that's what I did. I taught you what needs hunting and how to kill it and how to research if it was something new. I taught you how to fight and how to protect yourself and how to hustle pool. I trained you up. I raised you right."

"Raised me  _right_?!" A laugh made its way out of him, a bark of joyless sound, his lungs collapsing into themselves as they pushed it out, "You didn't raise me at all! You dragged me into adulthood at four years old and everything that I learned from you since was in the form of an order. 'Don't hold the gun like that, eat a damn vegetable, watch out for Sammy,'"

"And you did!" John said, gesturing around them, at the bunker, the photograph, their initials carved into the wooden table, "Yes, I was hard on you but look at what you've done with it. You took out Lucifer, you've saved people from things that I didn't even know existed, you killed the thing that killed Mom and you  _got her back._ "

"And that's all you care about, isn't it?" Dean shot back, unwanted tears stinging his eyes, throbbing behind his retinas, "That's all you've ever cared about. Mom was dead and you loved her more than us. You cared about revenge more than you cared about your living sons!"

He was shaking, with rage or fear or something else entirely, he wasn't sure. He pushed off the wall and instinctively shifted his posture into something more familiar, more defensive, something that would brace him for the impact of John's inevitable fury. He'd had a lot of practice at that after all.

"You acted like you lost everything that day, but I lost both my parents, and my childhood, and any chance of a normal life on November second, 1983, because from that moment on I was whatever you wanted me to be. I was a nanny, I was a soldier, I was a weapon, I was a nurse, and when I got old enough to take it I was a punching bag."

"Dean-"

"Don't pretend that you used to come home drunk and raging because you knew  _this_  is what I'd do with it. You did it because you thought that losing your wife was an excuse, that you were the tragic hero with the sad backstory and that explained away every bad thing you ever did. You didn't care what it was going to make me into! You didn't think you were making me stronger or a better hunter, that's just how you justified it to yourself afterwards."

"That's not true!" John snapped, though his eyes were lying, "It was training, Dean, all of it. Never let your guard down, always be prepared to fight."

"That's bullshit." Dean said, eerily calm now, "That's bullshit and you know it. You never let me fight back."

John let out a dismissive sound, as though that little factoid wasn't even worth acknowledging, as though it wasn't enough to dismantle every excuse that John had stored away. Years ago, that sound might have made him doubt himself, if his father didn't think it a valid point, then could he be wrong? Sam was better at this kind of talk, carefully crafting his arguments until you were reeling. But now? Dean had been in that same space of denial, of not wanting to believe even when the facts were staring you in the face.

He knew what he remembered,  _he_  hadn't been the one at least four bourbons deep; he remembered the shock, the fear, being dragged out of bed at four in the morning, John screaming in his face, the stench of alcohol soaked into his breath. He remembered a boot connecting with his stomach, he remembered trying to scramble to his feet only to be knocked back down by a fierce backhand, he remembered sobbing, snot and tears mingling with flecks of John's spit. He remembered the questions from eight-year-old Sammy the next day, when he got back from a boy in his class' sleepover, rolling his eyes when Dean said he'd been beating up bad guys like Batman.

He remembered just fine.

"It was a long time ago, Dean," John said, sounding so fucking  _reasonable_  that it made Dean's hair stand on end. "What does it matter anymore? I'm here. I've got my wife back, my boys. Why can't we just leave the past where it is?"

"Because you  _are_  my past!" The answer exploded out of him so forcefully that he barely even noticed the look of shock on his father's face, "I have  _tried_  to leave you behind but I can't, because you went to Hell for me so what does it say about me that I don't think I can forgive you?"

His breath shuddered in his lungs at the outburst of honesty, words he didn't think he'd ever be able to say.

"You  _died_ , and I was still so afraid of disappointing you that I went to Hell to save Sammy's life. And I don't regret it, because I love that kid, but I didn't do it for him. I did it because I thought of what you'd say if you knew that I'd failed. He turned cold in my arms and all I could think about was the way you looked at me after I let that Shtriga get away."

It still tore at him, shredded his insides with guilt that he'd barely been thinking about Sam at all when he made that deal. He hadn't been being noble or brave or self-sacrificing or whatever well-meaning crap Sam had labelled it as. He'd been too scared of his father to face a world without his brother, it was as simple as that.

"I couldn't afford to be soft," John said gruffly, "I didn't want to lose you."

"Well… you did. You lost Sammy when you shut down the fact he wanted to go to college, and you lost me the moment you told me I'd have to kill him."

A muscle jumped at the back of John's jaw, "I never told you that," he said, sounding unsure for the first time.

"Not yet. It'll be the last thing you say to me before you die." Dean wondered briefly if he was creating some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by telling John this; perhaps he never would have said anything of the sort if Dean hadn't just planted the idea. It was an idle thought and he didn't truly believe it, John had always been just that side of cruel. "The only reason you kept me around was to keep him safe, and then you go and tell me that everything I'd done, everything I'd given, everything I  _was_ , amounted to jack squat. I watched that boy grow up;  _I_ raised him. He was  _my_  kid and you told me—your dying freaking wish—No. You did a lot of screwed up stuff—put me in the hospital more than once—but never did you make me feel so broken as you did that day."

A ringing silence followed those words. John stared at Dean as though seeing him for the first time, all his fraying edges and fractured pieces. Then he cleared his throat and the discomfort was promptly locked away.

"I must've..." he began, taking a half-step towards his son, "I must've had a good reason, right?"

"Yeah, you thought you did. But your reason still would've ended up with a dead Sam, so… you found my line, I guess."

"I'm glad you have one." John said, and his lips twitched at the incredulity that must be showing on Dean's face, "I'm serious, I worried sometimes that I'd push you too far, that you'd be trying so hard to be like me that you'd overreach, get yourself caught up in something that you weren't ready for."

Dean scoffed, "Yeah, I've done that once or twice."

"Well… you made it through, clearly." John said gruffly, "Look, I'm not gonna try and pretend that you've not seen some shit. I know you've been through a lot, both of you, but look at today, look at now. I'm here,  _Mom's_  here, our family together again for the first time since you were four, isn't that what you want? Hell, it's all you ever cried for when you were a kid. What's the point in dredging up the bad when we can focus on the good?"

"Because this is the only chance I got," Dean said, and it sounded like a question. "And I can't spend it biting my tongue and eating dinner and pretending that I'm not mad at you, that I don't hate you for everything that you put me through, for everything that you tried to make me into. I can't do it. And it's been eating me up inside that I never got to tell you that you were  _wrong_. And I never showed you that I made a  _person_  out of that scared little kid. And I'm all kinds of screwed up, and I've made a lot of bad choices, but for the most part I actually like who I am and I—I need you to know that."

"Duly noted," John said coldly, and then he changed the topic, his voice kicking up several notches, as though that wasn't the most important thing Dean had ever said to him, as though admitting that he wasn't the worst person in the history of ever hadn't taken him years of self-loathing and struggle, "what do you mean this is your only chance? You can't kick me out; that ain't gonna stand, boy. I won't be separated from my family again, you hear me?"

Dean couldn't help but smile at the familiar trickle of fear down his spine; this was the John Winchester he remembered, the one he knew, not the calm, reasonable man he'd seen break down at the sound of his wife's voice, this one; full of rage and ready to lash out like a caged wolverine, advancing on him with his fists clenched,  _this_  was his father.

"I'm not kicking you out, Dad, but you can't stay. You weren't resurrected like Mom was, you were pulled forward. Messing with time like that can't hold."

"You said you've dealt with this shit before."

"Yeah, and we had to send people back to die then too."

Dean pictured Gavin's naïve but determined face, heard Ellen and Bobby's old married couple jabber, Cas' guilt, "Chances are you're not even gonna remember any of this. If you did, things probably would've been different."

He found himself suddenly and painfully in mourning for that time that never was. If John had had a sudden change of heart in 2003, maybe he would've called Sam to apologise for trying to hold him back from college, maybe he would've been able to see Dean as something other than a soldier. Maybe he would have been lighter, full of hope that one day, they would not only avenge Mary's death but  _save_  her, maybe he would've been willing to spend time with Dean outside of hunting if he had known that at least some things were destined to work out.

Maybe Dean would have had a few more happy memories of his father.

"You're gonna just throw me away? Your own  _father_? What happened to family?!"

"What happened to family when  _we_  needed you?" Dean shot back with heat, feeling his fingernails dig grooves into his palms, "We had to go back to Lawrence to salt and burn Mom's ghost and I  _begged_  you to come and help us, but you didn't pick up the phone, didn't even ask about it the next time we saw each other. And what about when I got hurt, when I was dying and I had  _days_  to live? Sam called you then but you still didn't care, didn't call back or come see me one last time. So keep talking about who threw who away."

He wiped impatiently at the angry tears that had spilled down his cheeks, he still remembered the fear, the disappointment, the hurt. Lying in that hospital bed, his heart thumping so hard and fast that it was convinced he could see it through his skin, trying to think of reasons that would excuse John's absence. He'd called them the week before after all, shoved them onto a case that had nearly ended with Dean getting butchered by a fucking scarecrow so they knew he was alive and on the trail of old yellow-eyes, apparently too fucking busy to pop his head round the door and lie to him that it was going to be okay.

"Besides," he added, partially just as a barb, "I  _have_  a family, Dad. Sam, Mom, Cas and Jack,  _they_  are my family and I don't know what changes if you don't go back. 2003, right? Not long after the big fight? You disappear on us then, what happens? Do me and Sam ever speak again? We definitely wouldn't get Mom back, Jack probably wouldn't exist and Cas would still be Heaven's bitch. If you stay, you will be taking my family from me. And I won't let that happen." His jaw jutted out, meeting steel with steel as their eyes locked. After a few tense moments John relented, and Dean knew that it was the thought of Mary that swayed him.

"So you're telling me," John said, his voice scratchy and edged with something darker, one of his hands finding a grip on the back of the nearest chair, "that you have a chance to say what needs to be said, have a final family dinner, and all you wanna do with it is chew me out?"

"What did you expect me to say?" Dean asked softly, his defensive posture collapsing into something smaller. "That I miss you? I don't. That I love you? You already know I do, I followed everything you did. I spent most of my life making excuses for you when you let us down, trying to figure out how it was my fault, because it had to be my fault. And I wanted the chance to say these things to you but I don't want you back, Dad. I don't want you to stay. And I don't know what that makes me, but there it is."

"Wow, you're really not pullin' your punches are you? I've been here less than two hours and you tell me that you'd rather I go back to being dead?" John voice was gritty, the warm lighting throwing the crevices of his mouth and between his eyes into sharp relief. If Dean didn't know better, and he wasn't entirely sure that he did, he'd say that John looked hurt.

"That's not—" Dean began, then he reconsidered, "okay, yeah. Maybe that's exactly what I'm saying. I used to wish that you'd look at me and you'd be proud of what you saw. But if wishes were horses you still couldn't make 'em drink. Nothing I did was good enough for you. You'd give me an order, I'd follow it, and then you'd beat the shit out of me because I'd messed up somehow and you wonder why I don't want you to stick around?"

John's knuckles were white against the smooth wood of the chair and that sight brought back something that raised the skin on Dean's arms into goosebumps, despite the fact that he was almost uncomfortably warm. Then, the grip loosened and John let out a sigh, the kind that rattled from one's very bones; he even slumped forward slightly, those dark eyes lowering to the floor, his shoulders losing some of that rigid marine posture that Dean had tried to emulate for a while.

"You're right."

The words were so quiet that Dean thought he must have misheard, lost a syllable or two to the constant, low-level buzz of the Men of Letters' ancient machinery behind him. Then John walked forward until he could place a hand on Dean's shoulder. It was heavy and grounding and Dean was torn between flinching away and collapsing into his father's chest. He did neither. "You're right. I was… I was tougher on you than I needed to be."

Dean would have scoffed at that but the breath caught in his lungs as he waited.

"You were just so strong. Everything I ever asked of you you gave me back more. You took care of your brother, you helped me work cases, you trained your ass off. You surpassed me in every way. And- and it made me furious sometimes, because what right did you have to be better than me?  _I_  was supposed to be the one holding everything together, I was supposed to be there for  _you_  on a bad day. But you didn't seem to need me at all. It was like you were trying to replace me. And I forgot that you were just a boy, and I'd get so damn mad because you were growin' up without me and every time I'd come back from a hunt you'd be a little bit taller and Sam would be a little bit further away and I'd wonder what the hell I missed: another book report? Your new favourite song? A drawing already taped to the fridge?"

John's breath shuddered out and he wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, the other on Dean's shoulder increased in pressure, as though he was using his son to stay standing. "I hated that I was just a visitor in your lives."

Dean felt tears on his own face, his stomach churned at the sight of his father like this, admitting that maybe, just maybe, he regretted Dean's childhood as much as Dean did.

"I was never tryin' to take your place, Dad," Dean said, shifting so that John's hand fell away, putting the wall to his back. His voice cracked like two pebbles colliding, "I thought that if I could just hold us together for long enough, I thought you'd come back. The you I remember from before. I thought you just needed time, that one day, you'd come home and you'd pick me up and swing me around like you used to and you'd look at me like I was worth a damn and you'd say, 'Good job, but I've got it from here.' But you never did. And I thought it was my fault… it was only when I started talking again that you began leaving us with Bobby to go hunt proper. If I'd stayed quiet you wouldn't have left. I thought I could fix it. For years I was just trying to fix it."

"I'd get so  _angry_ ," John said, and Dean got the distinct impression that they were talking past each other, not that John hadn't heard what his son had just said, but that he was too caught up in his own thoughts to respond, "and you'd be tellin' me everything that I missed out on and I had to remind myself that I was doing good out there, saving people, that I'd made this choice. But every time you told me about Sammy's school play or how you'd gone to the fair in town it made me feel like I'd chosen wrong. And I couldn't stand that. So I'd find an excuse and I'd blame the bottle and I'd blame yellow-eyes and I'd blame God. But it was  _my_  knuckles that were bruised and that just made me madder. And then I'd come back and I'd look at you, bloody and beat to hell and you'd be so scared and you'd flinch away when I reached for you but you  _needed_ me again."

Dean choked back a sob, not even daring to blink as he felt more hot tears spill down his face, but he wasn't even sure John had seen them; although their eyes were locked, John's looked far away; Dean wasn't sure what he was seeing but it sure as hell wasn't his forty-year-old son.

"Somewhere along the way, they stopped being excuses and they became reasons," he continued, his voice little more than the rasp of a knife being sharpened in the next room, "they became discipline. And every time you got smart with me, and every mistake that you made, things that shouldn't've been nothin', things that any kid… it started to feel righteous, like the way beatin' on a rugaru or a ghoul felt righteous, like I was taking back my place, like I was beating the bad out of you and it didn't matter that there weren't no bad to begin with. And I never thought about it, I never  _let_  myself think about it because it started to feel—Christ—it started to feel  _good_  to hurt you."

John's eyes, which had drifted to a point over Dean's shoulder, suddenly snapped back with horrified clarity, "How could I do that, Dean? How could I treat you like a monster? My boy."

Dean shook his head wordlessly, he didn't know. He'd spent years questioning John's motivation; drunken rage was usually up there, along with tough love, a warped sense that he was teaching Dean how to be better, but never had Dean thought that he  _liked_  it. Satisfaction, sure, but  _enjoyment_? He felt sick. John had always been so sorry afterwards, cleaning him up or storming back out as though he couldn't face what he'd done. He was suddenly reminded of Hell, after thirty years of the worst Alastair had to offer he remembered the relief when he finally got a blade in his hand, the righteous fury, the revenge that he would take from whatever soul was placed in front of him; he remembered carving it into manifested flesh while screams echoed in his ears and he remembered using that sound as fuel, used it as music. He wondered if that had been similar to the way John felt when he looked down at him, fist raised, boot primed to swing, fractured pleas suspended in the air.

"If you liked it that much then why did you start sending me away?" Dean asked, although he wasn't sure he really wanted an answer, "I would've rather taken a beating than watch you hotwire a car and throw me the keys without so much as looking at me."

"You're telling me you never wanted a break?" John sounded incredulous, "Day in, day out you were glued to this family, you never wanted to get away for a bit?"

Anger curled hot in Dean's stomach, "So… it was supposed to be a  _treat_  for me? Don't even try to pull that crap, I begged you not to make me go. You cut me off from the only thing you let me care about! Do you even know what I've done for that kid, 'cause  _he_  sure as hell doesn't. But I kept him safe, Dad, I watched out for Sammy, just like you told me. I've died for him, I sold my soul for him, and before all of that I sold  _myself_  for him; to keep him fed, to keep us in whatever shithole motel we were in that week, to keep the heating on, to make sure he had a new coat and shoes when he needed them because  _you_  forgot that kids grow, and that a hundred and fifty bucks doesn't go very far when it's trying to feed two boys for a week longer than you  _said_  you'd be gone. Did you know that no one wants to play pool with a thirteen-year-old for money? But I learned early on that they'll put their money where my mouth is. And you raised me to do that. So how does it feel to know that, Dad? How does it feel to know that you raised a whor-"

The force of the blow snapped his head back into the brick wall with a crunch, his teeth ripped through the skin of his bottom lip and he staggered sideways, throwing an arm up to deflect any more oncoming attacks, but there were none. He worked his jaw, not broken, but there would definitely be a mark. He spat a gobbet of blood onto the scrubbed wooden floor and glared up at his father, whose palm was open now, reaching for him as if to help. Dean used to take that hand with relief, he used to allow John to pull him up and speak to him softly, clinging to whatever comfort he could wring from it.

"Yeah," he said, his voice rough with pain, "that's what I thought." He ignored John's hand and straightened up, shaking his head to dispel the dizziness the wall had knocked into him.

"Why did you tell me that, Dean?" John asked brokenly, stepping back, his eyes wide and horrified, either at the punch itself or the reason for it. Dean tried not to get a sick satisfaction out of the expression and failed, "Why would you say something like that?"

Dean snorted and winced as a wave of nausea came along with it; he stumbled over to the chair John had been holding onto before and gingerly lowered himself into it, wishing, not for the first time, that he'd let Cas buy those cushions with the honeybees on them, "Because the first thing out of your mouth wasn't, 'I'm sorry'. That's why."

John sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face and head, a gesture that was all too familiar, "I never told you to do that," he said, sounding pained, "I never would've..."

"You  _told_ me to look after Sammy," Dean retorted, raising his chin defiantly, "so I did. And it is  _not_  my fault that you didn't care enough to notice what it was costing me." He had spent too long blaming himself, hating himself, turning the shower up to scalding to scrub away his shame, trying to avoid touching Sammy in case he made him dirty too. Dean was done with it. He had done the best he could with the little he had and he had kept Sam safe. It had just taken him the majority of his thirties to make peace with that idea.

"You really think I didn't care?" John asked, his voice like the scrape of a serrated blade over bone, Dean knew the sound well, "You thought I didn't see when you lost weight, when you skipped school? I did what I could; I fed you up in between hunts, I'd leave you more money, I'd take you to Bobby's, I taught you what you needed to know. But sometimes hunts run longer than you mean them to, you know that. I always asked you how you were holding up and you said that you were fine, that things were good. You didn't want me to notice, Dean, you wanted me to trust that you could handle it."

"I WAS A KID!" Dean roared, suddenly on his feet again, though his belly roiled at the too-quick movement, "I was skipping meals to feed my brother, I was making money on my knees; I didn't need you to care about my damn  _pride_ , Dad, I needed you to help me!"

All the desperation of that thirteen-year-old child who had haunted truck stops and the back alleys of bars on the regular had somehow eked out into his voice; he tasted salt and copper, his fingers clutched at the front of his plaid, twisting in the soft fabric. His chest was clenched tight, barely allowing gasps of air through.

"You can't tell me to take care of my brother no matter what, then give me a few bills and tell me not to come back until I've taken care of a poltergeist the next state over. What did you think that would do to me, huh? I didn't know if I'd screwed up so bad that you thought I couldn't look after him anymore or if you were hoping I'd go and get myself killed so you wouldn't have to deal with the fuck-up son."

"Don't be an idiot, that's not what it was." John said sharply, latching on to the new turn in subject with such speed that it made Dean's head spin, or maybe that was the possible concussion.

"Then what was it? 'Cause you'd forbid me from callin' or coming back early, even if I got hurt. I was terrified I'd come home and find Sammy with a split lip that he wouldn't tell me how he got, you understand?"

"I never hit Sam. Not once." John said, his tone defensive, outraged, as though the fear was an unreasonable one, as though to even think he would cross that line was an insult he wouldn't tolerate, and that stung more than Dean would ever admit.

"But you told him I  _left_! Every time I came back he'd look at me like I'd just thrown him at a werewolf and told it to chow down. What the hell kind of sick mind games were you playing? You tell me that it's my job to look out for my little brother, and then you tell him that he can't trust me because who knows when I'm gonna take off? He needed someone to rely on and that was supposed to be me."

"No, Dean, it wasn't. It was supposed to be me." John's voice took on a gentle curve, soothing, he stepped forward, heavy boots sending vibrations through Dean's already fuzzy head. He must really look like shit if John was trying to talk him down, but at that moment, John's attempt to soothe scraped at him like a damn cheese grater.

"BUT YOU WEREN'T THERE!" He bellowed, uncaring if his voice carried. His brain felt like a string of fairy lights pulled out once a year, a tangled mess, no matter how neatly they'd been put away. He wanted to sit back down but couldn't bring himself to give ground, "Christmases, birthdays, parent-teacher nights, I was there every time, and then you tell him that I up and abandoned him too?  _ME_?! I was getting fucked in truck stop bathrooms so that he could go on the next school trip and you told him that I didn't care about him enough to even say goodbye! Do you know what it's  _like_  to feel like nothing? To be used and broken and thrown away time and again only to come home and know that the reason you were even out there, the reason you let them—that he thinks you were out stealing beer or at the arcade, that he hates you because he thinks you don't care."

His breath was coming too fast now, too shallow, his head was swimming and his eyes streaming and his thoughts screaming and John was so close now he could smell him. Old worn leather and gasoline and warm liquor. It was comforting, it made his every muscle strain with tension, he couldn't relax, he couldn't breathe—

He heard the swish of a belt being pulled from its loops, felt cracked porcelain digging into his stomach, old springs pressing on his spine, a seatbelt buckle bruising his hip. He heard low chuckles and gasps and grunts, insults and praise. Tears hot on his face, the shifting of clothes, the sharp clarity of crumpled bills shoved into his palm. Salt and sweat, tang and the tickle of hair, shame crashing down on him like a building. Pain and pressure and fingerprints bruised into his thighs, his throat, his arms. His knees ached on the mouldy tiles and he had to tightly control his breathing. He tried that now, forcing air into his uncooperative lungs, flinging a hand out in front of him as if to push.

And then the bunker was back, and John was standing there on the other end of his hand, fingertips barely brushing his shirt. Dean was somehow doubled over as he gasped. The visual helped, it opened his airways and calmed him. Home, he was home. Sam was only down the hall, he was safe and those memories were just that. Half the people he'd 'serviced' were probably dead by now. He couldn't help a grim satisfaction at the thought.

"What the hell was that?" John asked, voice tight with concern, he bounced on the balls of his feet as though there was something to do, something to fight. But the damage had been done a long time ago and these were just the aftershocks. Dean hated that John had witnessed it, nothing quite says 'I'm totally over it' like a freaking panic attack. Usually these moments only came at night when he couldn't sleep, when he was left alone with his thoughts in a particularly morose mood. Too much else had happened for that to be regular nightmare fuel but it happened on occasion. And when it did, he made sure to lock the door until it had passed. Sam didn't need to see that.

Dean straightened up and swallowed hard, ignoring the tremble in his legs, the quiver in his throat as he cleared it and shook his head.

"You don't get to be a drive-by dad," he said, letting his hand fall back to his side, the pain in his head dulled by a weak pulse of adrenaline, the ebb and flow of it leaving him shaking. "I tried to give you the gig but it was too late by the time you wanted it."

"Too late for you," John implored, choosing to move past what he had just witnessed, though there was a wariness there that Dean hated, "not for him."

That brought Dean up short, "What?"

John huffed a frustrated breath, took a half-step back, angled so he could lean against the heavy library table. "I knew I was hurting you. I knew I wasn't going to stop. When you were around I didn't need to keep myself in check. So when you pissed me off, when you  _really_  pissed me off, it was a punishment, yeah, but I couldn't hurt you if you weren't there to be hurt, and no matter how much lip Sammy gave, no matter how much he fought me, it was easy to just… not. I never got to the place where I thought I  _could_."

"Until the big fight, right?"

"Yeah," John sighed at the bitterness in his son's tone, "until the big fight."

Dean remembered that fight. Of course he did, how could he not? It had been the forefront of his nightmares for a good long while, it was the night he replayed over and over like a scratched record. What had started with Sam throwing a duffel over his shoulder and telling them both how it was going to be quickly became a screaming match. Everyone was throwing around threats and resentments and it built and built until John finally snapped and took a swing. Dean hadn't even seen it coming, he'd been too far away to get in the middle of it, too wrapped up in his own feelings of betrayal. It wasn't until the crack of John's knuckles echoed through the small kitchen that Dean even turned around. Sam had stumbled backwards, knocking the dirty dishes from thirty minutes ago to the floor, sending porcelain shards everywhere. Sam knew how to take a hit, they'd been taking cases as a family for a good few years by that point and they trained hard, but this was different, Dean knew it all too well; it hurt more because it screamed  _wrong_.

John, for his part, had looked just as shocked as Sam, and Dean felt the past decade shatter under his feet like those damn dishes. All those years of protecting, of forcing himself between John's heavy glare and Sam's piercing words, they meant nothing; he hadn't been able to spare his brother even that.

The yelling had begun again as the shock dissipated, Sam snatched up his bag and left without looking back, porcelain crunching under his shoes, dreams of Stanford and escape and a life without the burden of his family in his head, not knowing that the fight was far from over, that Dean would be in the hospital before the night was done.

In the end, Dean couldn't blame Sam for leaving, though that hadn't stopped him trying for a very long time.

And suddenly, now, it was like the past thirteen years had never happened. Dean no longer felt like a mature adult with a few apocalypses under his belt, ready to have this final confrontation with his father. No, he felt like he had at twelve, the first time John had punched him,  _really_  punched him, outside of pulled blows in training and play-wrestling matches. The forming bruise on his jaw felt heavier than it should, more present, no longer the kind of pain that he had been trained to ignore, it was vibrant and tender and swollen with guilt. He tasted pennies on his teeth and used the back of his hand to dab at his stinging lip. It came away coppery and he saw the way John's face clammed up as he wiped it on his jeans.

"He was right to leave." Dean said heavily, "We shouldn't have tried to stop him. Kid deserved a chance."

John nodded slowly, "Maybe. Woulda made keeping an eye on him a hell of a lot easier if we could just invite ourselves over for coffee too."

"Yeah."

There was a beat while the tension began to ease slightly, at least half the fight draining from the both of them. Then John rubbed at the back of his neck, rolling it around until it popped.

"I also thought that sending you away would help," he said, sounding almost sheepish, "with the, uh, thing."

Dean frowned, "What thing? I never had a thing."

"The, uh, makin' eyes at everyone thing." John mumbled, "I thought if you took a break you could get it all out of your system and come back normal, at least around Sammy."

Dean's jaw snapped shut and it felt as though someone had just cracked an egg on the back of his head, cold goop trickling down his neck, his spine popping with the effort of holding back a shudder.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

John snorted, "Getting everything out in the open,  _honesty_ , isn't that the point of this whole… discussion? Or did you just want the opportunity to take pot-shots at your old man?"

Dean sank back down into the chair, legs unable to support his weight any longer. This certainly wasn't the way he had wanted this conversation to go.

"You know," John continued, levelling a glare at his son, shoving his hands in his pockets and shifting his weight against the table edge, "I think I was pretty good about that stuff, I never brought it up. I figured it was something you'd grow out of, something you just needed to work through on your own until—"

"Until I was normal?" Dean finished quietly.

"Until you figured it out," John countered, his eyebrows knitting together, "you like women, Dean, you've always liked women. Honestly, the amount you've picked up over the years borders on ridiculous. Besides, you know it yourself, you need respect in this line of work; the respect of other hunters, of the townsfolk we interview and a healthy dose of fear don't hurt either. Who's gonna respect and fear you if any guy can just bend you over a table? No one, that's who."

"I got respect," Dean said, unable to stop himself, even as a furious heat spread over his face, "fear too. You'd be hard-pressed to find another hunter who hasn't heard of us. Hell, even most of the things we hunt know our names." He looked John right in the eyes then, those hard, dark eyes that he'd once thought contained all the light of a supernova if only he could earn it. "And I'm gonna make one thing perfectly clear: no one bends me over a table unless I want them to. Not anymore."

He heard John's teeth clack together, those bottomless eyes narrowed and tension rippled from his neck and through to his arms.

"So you're telling me you're—"

"I like both," Dean cut in, not wanting to hear whatever slur was halfway out of his father's mouth, "men and women. I like 'em both."

He refused to back down, refused to apologise. He'd been sorry for long enough, even if John was the first person he'd actually, you know,  _said_  it to. He was pretty sure Sam had figured it out, what with all the pointed looks and eyebrow raises and bitchfaces shot at him over the years, but the guy was probably waiting for Dean to bring it up, for him to be  _ready_ , which, despite being hokey crap, was also kinda sweet.

Cas however was blissfully unaware, which suited Dean just fine, because if he told the angel that he liked kissing men then the obvious next step would be for him to proceed with kissing Cas until his lungs gave out, or until Cas gently pushed him away and told him how impractical this would be and how sorry he was but that he didn't feel the same, or outright lie and say that as an angel, he  _couldn't_  feel the same even though he was a lot more human than most people Dean had met, those big doe eyes practically dripping with earnestness as he found a way to isolate himself.

John harrumphed like a walrus gearing up for battle and the comparison might have been funny if Cas and Sam hadn't made him sit through that entire Our Planet series on Netflix so he knew exactly how terrifying walruses were. "You think so, do you?"

"What do you care?" Dean shot back. "You're gone, remember? What does it matter?"

"You're my son, call it professional pride. I spent years trying to protect Sam from your nonsense—"

"Protect Sam?!" Dean was on his feet again, finger stabbing into his father's chest, forcing him backwards, "You weren't trying to protect him when we were melting silver in motel bathrooms with the window barely an inch open and no kind of safety equipment. You weren't trying to protect him when you started dragging him out on hunts at fifteen, or when you didn't show up when you said you were going to. His girlfriend was killed in front of him the same way Mom was; he was trapped in Lucifer's cage in Hell for I don't even know how long; we hunt  _monsters_  to pass the time and you think he'd be… what,  _afraid_  if I brought a guy home?"

Not that he ever had, or even really wanted to. He'd had a handful of casual hookups in the past few years, all of them at the other person's place but truth be told, he hadn't gotten to fourth base (fifth base?) with a guy since he was being paid for it. Everyone had a good time regardless but none of them were exactly the 'stick around through the next apocalypse' material that he hadn't realised he wanted. It had been over a year since his last and that had been an awkward encounter once he realised why he'd picked the dark-haired, blue-eyed man with a semi-permanent scowl over his blond friend with the sweet smile.

It might send a shockwave of anxiety through him at the idea of telling Sam that maybe he was into dudes and  _maybe_  the main dude he was into wasn't a dude at all but a concentration of celestial energy bundled up in a trenchcoat, but did he actually think Sam would reject him for it? Mr Bleeding-Heart who would probably deck out the bunker in rainbow flags just to show how supportive he was (and he dared suspect a glitterbomb was inevitable because he may be supportive but he also had an annoying little brother quota to fill)? No. His fear was his own crap that had nothing to do with Sam and everything to do with the disgust in his father's eyes that both lanced deeper than he imagined and felt like the relief of an infection getting drained by being exactly what he had expected.

John grabbed his wrist and wrenched it around and up until Dean swore. Then he shoved his son forwards, sending him sprawling. Before Dean could even get his arms in front of him, he clipped his hip on the edge of the chair he'd just been sitting on and blinding pain rocketed through him; both of his hands diverted to the source and he hit the ground hard, barely avoiding cracking his head again.

"Son of a bitch!"

His vision swam back into hazy focus and he rolled onto his back to see John looming over him.

"I don't know what kinda damaged your mind got by what you used to get paid for, boy, but you can leave your brother the hell out of it."

Dean laughed, he couldn't help it; the sharp bark of sound made him wince, forcing its way out of him where it kicked back from the stone walls, sunk into the bookshelves and changed John's expression from revulsion to a more familiar anger.

"Dad, this is the one thing about myself that  _didn't_  come from damage; the anger, the drinking, the co-dependency thing me and Sam have going,  _those_  are from damage. The fact that I hid it for so long, that I haven't even told Sam yet,  _that's_  damage, but the thing itself?" He coughed once and flopped his arms out to the sides like he was getting nailed to a freaking cross; it made sense, he was preparing for a crucifixion after all, "that's just me."

John scoffed, a dismissive sound that bubbled under Dean's skin more than outright rage would have.

"You sound like a damn Christmas movie, grow the hell up. When you fall in love,  _actual_ love, you might understand."

"I've been in love," Dean said not at all ashamed of using the chair to pull himself up; he thought of Cassie's bright laugh, of Lisa's soft touch, of Cas, all hard edges and glares and gentle patience, "more than once. So I understand perfectly. What's love to you, Dad? Is it what you had with Mom? Because I've got a pretty good memory and I remember finding her crying at the kitchen table with the phone in her hand because you left in the middle of a fight and then called her  _from a bar_  to finish it because you didn't have the guts to look her in the face. And no cupid ever got their arrow into me, so if you wanna talk about which one of us knows what love is for real, it ain't you."

John stilled at that, his head swivelling to point narrowed eyes at Dean's face, waiting until his son was on his level once more, "What are you talking about?" he rumbled, sending fear skittering across Dean's skin, John was always more terrifying when his rage was quiet.

Dean hesitated. He could crush his father's world in a few words. Because it explained so much, didn't it, that him and Mary were a literal match made in Heaven? It's not like their relationship was a solid one after all, it was built on barely anything, loose soil and feelings. Mary had liked that John was normal, John had liked that Mary was different. They loved each other because they loved each other because they loved each other but they weren't exactly stable together.

But how many cases had Dean worked that dealt with someone who had lost a spouse? More than half? And out of those—disregarding the ones where the remaining spouse had been the killer all along—how many became hunters obsessed with revenge? Maybe a handful. Most were able to move on, to try and strive for a new normal, to grieve in the regular, human way, especially the ones with kids, but not John. And even that fixation hadn't been enough to stop him from fathering Adam.

Without Mary around to ground him, she had become something of a mythical figure to her husband, a paragon of all the love John Winchester was capable of twisted and compressed and forced into a Mary-shaped mold. Nothing else could ever live up to her, not even Mary herself.

And by pointing that out, Dean would be attacking the very rockbed of John's identity; knowing that the only pure thing he had was caused by an order and a prophecy and cupid's bow... it would destroy him.

And Dean... Dean was tempted, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't. It's not like the man would remember anyway, and it might actually be best to keep him away from Mary until the wish ran out. She  _had_  read the journal after all, she had read first-hand how drastically the man she married had changed. She also must have theories about how he treated their sons. Dean had caught a few sharp looks over the years and she was perceptive, no matter how he and Sam tried to spare her as much as they could.

But he remembered what it was to be broken, to have everything he believed in stripped away like wrapping paper covering the world's shittiest gift, his entire worldview spinning on its axis. And maybe John deserved to know, but Dean realised in that moment that he didn't deserve to tell him, he didn't deserve whatever John's (probably violent) reaction was going to be and honestly, he was too tired to deal with it.

"Nothing." Dean said, turning away and sitting down heavily, the chair legs scraping against wood as he shuffled it around back to face the table. "You just… whatever you had with her stopped being love when she died. It became excuses, justice, whatever."

John seemed to realise that there was more to it that Dean wasn't telling him, but maybe he sensed that it was something he'd be better off not knowing because he didn't press. Selective knowledge, one of John's specialities.

"Are you done fighting?" He said instead, hand hovering over the back of the chair next to Dean's.

"Are you done beating me up?"

John huffed an exasperated sound, "Come on, Dean—"

"No, I'm done." Dean leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table, running both hands through his hair and wincing when he touched the place that had hit the wall. He thought he'd feel different. He'd said pretty much everything that had been weighing on him. Everything except Adam, he supposed, but then again, he'd never really blamed John for that; hell, John Winchester giving one of his children a chance at normal was probably the kindest thing he'd ever done. But instead of relieved or purged or whatever the hell, he just felt tired.

"Figures," he muttered darkly, swiping the discarded beer bottle that still had a few fingers of liquid in it and drained them in one pass. John took that as his cue to sit, staring resolutely forwards as though Dean was across from him rather than to his left.

"What does?"

"You know, it's funny," Dean said by way of an answer, staring into the brown froth left at the bottom of the bottle, the initials of his family blurred and twisted by the glass on top of it, "I don't think I gained a damn thing. My one wish and all it got me was an argument and a cracked skull. And now you know things about me that nobody else knows, nobody, and if that just ain't the definition of ironic, 'cause you were the last person I ever wanted to tell. I knew you'd hate me for it, as though I'm not enough of a disappointment to you already, right? I've let Sam down over and over, started an apocalypse or two, currently got an archangel trapped in my head, made family out of things you would've hunted. I'll bet you're so proud."

"I'm your father," John's reaction was gut-quick and pained, "I've always been proud of you."

Dean felt his lips tucking in at the corners like he was trying to press back the emotions threatening to escape. It took him a few sluggish moments to realise that there were none. John Winchester had just said that he was proud of him and Dean barely felt a tug of… well… anything.

"Great," he spat, bay-leaf-bitter. "Would it have killed you to tell me that when I actually cared?"

John looked around at that and there was something in his expression that Dean had never seen before, it kicked back a fractured reflection of Dean's own guilt, his own pain, his own hollow loneliness. The lines on his face, lighter than they'd been just before he died suddenly seemed to be great crevices, a landfill for every painful memory that the years had gifted him. His voice grated back, like the rattle of the impala's heating vent when they cranked it up higher than the third setting.

"Maybe," he said ruefully. "Maybe it would've killed me to see you realise that it didn't change anything."

Squeezing his eyes closed as though to insulate the chill that had just trickled through him, Dean nodded slowly before opening them again, "Yeah, I guess maybe that would've killed me too."

They lapsed into silence. Dean began picking at the label on the beer bottle, creating a small pile of shredded, soggy paper. John twisted in his chair to watch his son ignore him and Dean redoubled his efforts.

His brain felt like paste and although Michael had been blessedly quiet during this whole encounter (which was suspicious in and of itself), he still had a wicked headache and his thoughts were churning too fast for him to keep up.

Did he even feel better getting all this crap out in the open? He wasn't really sure. In some ways it was a relief just to have said the words out loud, to feel the vibrations in his throat form around his deepest secrets and push them out through his mouth. In other ways though, he felt empty. Speaking those feelings hadn't made anything better, it hadn't erased the nights he slept in the bathtub because he hadn't wanted to wake Sam up with his sobbing, it didn't change the electric fear he had felt every time the impala pulled up outside their door. It didn't change the weeks he'd spent alone and angry, trying to work a case as quickly as possible just so that he could go home.

But then again, it was never going to. He'd known that from the beginning. Honestly, if it would have changed things Dean would have been far more likely to play happy families instead. Because his story sucked, it was depressing and painful and everyone kept dying and he was too much of a coward to try and pursue the things that might actually make him happy, but it was _his_ story and dammit he was going to see it through. Some things had worked out in his favour after all and no way would he ever risk losing those things in order to turn back the clock and live through a different pile of shit to the one he'd already gone through. He'd already earned that medal, thank you very much.

"What you did to me," Dean said, moving the bottle and concentrating very hard on making sure that each piece of the label fit into the small circle of condensation it left behind. "How you raised me, it wasn't right. You had options, Dad. You didn't have to drag us all over the country, you didn't have to leave us in shitty motel rooms, you didn't have to press a gun in my hand at six years old and terrify the crap out of me with crime scene photos and ghost stories. You didn't have to hit me, or ignore when I was hurt or sick and you didn't have to just not ask where I got the money for an extra two weeks' rent. Whatever the hell destiny had to do with it, you had the power to make things better for us and you didn't and that's on you no matter which way you slice it. And I'll carry these scars for the rest of my life. I can't use a bathroom at a truck stop without barring the door with something so no one else can get in. I learned what roofies looked like _after_ I learned how they taste and I'll always know how it feels to wake up behind a dumpster and not know how I got there. I am so afraid of being left alone that I try to push people, try to make them leave me, because if I do it on purpose then I can prepare for it. And maybe that's why I get so pissed at Cas when he does something stupid or goes against us, no matter what his reasons are—and they're usually good ones. Every time I think, this is it, you finally pushed him too far. And I end up yelling at him when I should apologise, I tell him he's an idiot when I should be listening. Why the hell he's still here, I don't even know." He jolted then, aware that he'd gotten off topic, "Anyway, you can't change those things, I know you can't. But you could have once and I think it's important for you to know that."

John just stared at him and Dean felt himself turning red. He was out of paper to fiddle with, it was all neatly tucked into the circle like people hiding out in a ring of salt. He slid a finger through the circle, breaking the line, the dewy cold stuck to his fingertip, leaving a wet trail behind on the dark wood.

"I'm sorry,"

The words to Dean's right were so quiet that he thought he must have imagined them, wished them into being like he had the man who had spoken them. Then John cleared his throat and tried again, Dean turned to look at him and there was no mistaking it this time, John's lips moved in tandem with the sound, even if his eyes wouldn't hold. "I'm so sorry you feel that way, Dean."

Dean swallowed, his throat suddenly dry; he wished he hadn't finished that beer off so soon. He hesitated for a beat and then he nodded, deliberately waiting until John was looking. It wasn't forgiveness, but it wasn't rejection either. The apology settled somewhere behind his Adam's apple and stuck. It felt good, cleansing, like inhaling winter air. It didn't fix anything—honestly, Dean didn't think there  _was_  fixing anything—but that wasn't the point. The point was finally saying it, letting it out, letting it go.

 _Be like Elsa,_  he'd told Sam not too long ago; maybe he should follow his own advice for once. It was strange how an apology, as fleeting and reluctant at it probably was, made him feel what he'd begun this conversation hoping to feel, lighter. And he couldn't forgive John, might never be able to forgive him, but by apologising, John acknowledged that he had done something that required forgiving. And that was important, that meant something.

He sucked his split lip in between his teeth and poked at the forming scab with his tongue before pushing his chair back and standing. "Right, well I think Sam and Mom are probably wondering where you are and I've got a dinner to make so I should probably..." he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I daresay you'll have time for a movie or something before I'm done. Go, enjoy family night and don't let Sam pick or you'll end up watching a documentary or some black and white crap."

He patted John's shoulder on his way past, smiling at the confusion on his face, he paused in the doorway however and turned around, "and, Dad? Thanks."

He didn't wait for a reply, instead hurrying towards the kitchen as quickly as possible.

 

***

 

Mary and Sam were still in there, though they were no longer talking, they were staring nervously at the door when he walked in.

"Dean," Mary began, her voice shaking slightly, "is everything alright?"

"We heard yelling," Sam added in a harsher tone, his eyes narrowing as they landed on his bloody lip and the bolt of his jaw.

Dean instantly tensed, "Did you, uh, happen to hear anything specific?" He asked, it was a suspicious as hell question but he  _had_  to know, he couldn't bear the look on Mary's face if she knew, on  _Sam's_  face.

"Uh, no?" Sam said, his eyes narrowing further so they were little more than slits, he must've been taking lessons from Cas. Dean relaxed, letting out the breath that had been previously corked in his lungs.

"Cool. I uh, I think I took a pork joint out of the freezer last night so how about that for dinner? In the meantime, you two can introduce Dad to the wonders of Netflix."

"I could make dinner..." Mary offered, though whether that was because John would  _expect_  her to make dinner or because she was just trying to be polite, he wasn't sure.

"You  _could_ ," Dean said with a fond smile at his mother, "but I think we can all agree that one Winchester Surprise a month is just about all our bodies can take, as good as it is." He tipped her a wink and Mary stuck out her tongue, untensing slightly and, sensing that Dean was trying to usher them both out, acquiesced with grace and left.

Sam however, was not so easily moved. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned forcefully against the counter, his very posture an exclamation mark that he was not going anywhere without an explanation.

"What happened?" He asked, nodding to Dean's face.

"Doesn't matter," Dean said lightly, almost amused at the immediate bitchface. He skirted around his brother and headed to the fridge, slapping the hunk of wrapped pork onto the counter and setting the oven on to preheat.

"Dean—" Sam wheedled in his 'I'm-your-little-brother-and-you're-scaring-me' voice.

"Sam." Dean shot back in his best mockery of said voice; then he sighed, rooting around for various vegetables, herbs and side-dishes he could throw together, "We had it out, alright? Turns out, I really needed to yell at him."

"What for?" There wasn't any judgement in Sam's tone, or his eyes when Dean turned to look, there was only worry and the fear of a lie.

"We'll talk," Dean promised quietly, "once this is all over and Dad's gone, if you really wanna know, we'll talk. I can't promise I'll tell you everything, I don't know if I'm ready for that yet, might not ever be, but some of it… well, it might be time you knew. But only if you're sure that you wanna know. Okay?"

Sam considered him a moment, eyes raking his features, worried and relieved and grateful all at once. Then he nodded and smiled,

"Okay," he said. Then he strode forwards and yanked Dean into a hug, "you know I'll never think less of you, don't you?" He said, and Dean felt something tighten in his throat as he returned the hug one-handed, his other hand was currently smushed between his stomach and Sam's thigh, "You're my brother, and my hero, and… what the hell is poking me?" He pulled back, eyes briefly horrified until Dean held up the parsnip he'd been holding when Sam hugged him.

"Just happy to see you, Sammy," he quipped.

Sam rolled his eyes, "I retract my earlier statement," he said, though he was grinning.

"Alright, get out there and pick something to watch from  _this_  millennium, okay? Show Dad one of the classics."

"A classic from this millennium," Sam deadpanned, "Legally Blonde it is."

Dean reddened, "Shut up, it's a good movie."

"I'm not disputing that," Sam said, his eyes twinkling.

Dean shoved him playfully with his shoulder, "Get out of here, leave me and my parsnip in peace."

Sam laughed and made a lewd remark about where Dean could shove his parsnip on the way out.

Dean chuckled and turned back to the counter, busying himself with the ritual of cooking, of preparing a meal for his family. It was a shame Cas wasn't here too, but he was probably off doing important angel things, or he was scouting out thrift stores for more glass animals to add to the menagerie already cluttering his desk.

His thoughts churned over the confrontation he'd just had, the one he'd been quietly wishing for for more than ten years. His hands shook as he peeled and chopped and stirred and seasoned. His whole body felt like a leaf in fall, trembling on an ever-thinning stem. But despite this, his cheeks ached with the size of his grin. He was so immensely, ridiculously  _proud_ of himself. He could have springs in his feet, albeit very wobbly ones. He'd done it. He hadn't blown it for once, he hadn't backed down or chickened out to make things easier for everyone else, he'd gone all out and had done what he needed because  _he_  needed it and for no other reason. Maybe he shouldn't be so happy about his own selfishness, Chuck knew he was plenty selfish already, but being selfish around John was a whole other ball game and he'd just hit a home run.

So now he was going to make the best damn roast dinner he could, and then he was going to serve it to the only family he used to believe he'd ever have, and they were going to eat and laugh and poke fun at Sam's hair and enjoy what they had until the wish ended. And then there would be tears, probably - last words and goodbyes and such, but there would be no regrets on his end at least, and there would be no adhesive darkness clinging to his skin as he hugged his father for the final time.

Feeling truly at peace with himself was a foreign feeling, but he found that he liked it, and over the course of cooking one meal he had already grown comfortable in it, like he had shed his old skin and now he was finally just who he was, no more, no less. It wouldn't last, he knew that, his old insecurities would rear their ugly heads as soon as they returned their focus to Michael, but for now, for tonight, it was enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew... It's done.
> 
> So... what did you think? All forms of concrit and feedback are welcome and desperately hoped for.
> 
> This one means a lot to me. I really, really hope I did it justice.
> 
> Thank you all for reading :D
> 
> If you like, come and find me on [Tumblr](https://tibbinswrites.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Love Tibbins xx


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